I think my lens is dirty (or drive faulty). What can I do?
BluRay movies and games start normally, and then after about 5-15 minutes, fail to read anything else. "A Single Man" never gets past the menu. "Just Cause 2" stops loading new data in the middle of missions, and results in actionless roaming until I quit the game.
Upon quitting, the PS3 beeps three quick beeps and restarts.
I vacuumed as much dust away as I could, but I'm afraid to insert one of those lens cleaner discs with the felt thing on it, or blow compressed air in there.
What's the deal?
Posted Feb 9, 2011, 3:41 PM UTC
715
I once fixed a drive that stop reading discs on my 60 gig fat console by opening up the BR drive and cleaning the lens with a q-tip and some rubbing alcohol. The PS3 is a relatively easy console to disassemble and it's surprisingly modular (meaning everything is easy to get access to). You simply remove the top cover from the drive and you get access to the laser lens assembly. From there I just wiped an alcohol-soaked q-tip over the lens in light circular patterns then took a dry q-tip and did the same thing. I let it dry for a few minutes then put everything back together and it started reading discs again.
It's my understanding that the BR laser lens is very sensitive so even a microscopic bit of dust on the lens will render it useless.
Neato. Were your symptoms the same as mine--was the problem intermittent at first?
I've had a system that slowly had problems reading discs and eventually wouldn't read any at all. Thankfully, a little alcohol and a qtip cleaning of the lens fixed it right up. Give it a shot if you are out of warranty.
Yeah at first games would stop loading and crash in the middle of play and then blu-ray movies would do the same thing. Soon after the system wouldn't read any discs at all and it wouldn't even register that there was a disc in the drive - the loading icon in the top right would just spin and spin forever.
I believe if it's dust you could most likely just blast some compressed air into the assembly wihtout opening the unit... I never had to do this so I can't tell you for sure that it's a good idea but I don't think compressed air would have the force needed to move anything that is secured down or cause the laser to get mis-aligned (it's held on the rail pretty securely). Would check with someone else before trying but I think it should be safe.
Blasting compressed air into the system is exactly what causes this kind of thing. The PS3 manual itself warns against using compressed air to clean the system as it ends up blasting dust into other places in the console which in turn cause problems - like in the case of the blu-ray lens. It's always better to use a low powered vacuum cleaner to clean out the ps3.
Boom. Thanks!
I have a fat 60gb and the reason (in my opinion) for it being so modular is that is quite ef-ing huge... btw did you really use rubbing alcohol (that is 100% ethanol)? My lens is giving me problems with regular dvd playback (some cds are not being read either), I was thinking about getting a disc cleaner (you know, maybe that will help before I will attempt to open it and try to tamper with the lens directly); or a lens cleaning solution. Any suggestions?
I did use isopropyl alcohol and I've certainly heard that this isn't recommended and that one should use lens cleaning solution instead. I suppose if you have the lens cleaner you should use that. I didn't so I just went ahead with the alcohol. It worked fine for me but YMMV.